Virus Interactions with the Host: Past, Present and Future Developments

The first demonstration of the oncogenicity of a human virus was the induction of malignant transplantable tumors by injection of human adenovirus Type 12 into newborn hamsters (1), or mice (2). Tumors arose early at any of several sites of injection, and sometimes remotely, usually in the liver, resulting in death from tumor growth in from 29 to 108 days (3). The tumors were histologically undifferentiated malignant neoplasms (4). They contained virus-induced transplantation antigens (5) and newborn hamsters could be passively protected against tumor induction by immunization of the mothers before pregnancy (6).